


don't you know i'm (not) okay

by SafelyCapricious



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Psychological Torture, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-01-11
Packaged: 2019-03-03 17:34:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13346124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SafelyCapricious/pseuds/SafelyCapricious
Summary: “I don’t give a fuck about my dad." Skye says, "It’s Jemma. Can you help or not?”Out of options, the team turns towards Grant to try to rescue Jemma from her Hydra imprisonment. It's more than either of them asked for.





	don't you know i'm (not) okay

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt Eat Me + Biospecialist! Which is...only a little cheating since it's not Grant and Jemma saying it to each other, but whatever. The fic is Biospecialist!
> 
> Um. Second part is...a problem. I'll figure it out. 
> 
> Enjoy!

It’s been a few weeks since he’s seen anyone but Triplett, who insists on brining him his food with a sneer.

 

So he’s more then a little thrown when Skye comes down the stairs, especially when he sees how upset she looks. Her eyes are ringed in red, her hair is a mess and she hasn’t really tried to cover it up at all. He wonders if Coulson even knows she’s there.

 

She walks right up to the edge of the force field, glare firm, and says, “You want to prove yourself to us. Now’s your chance.”

 

He relaxes back on his cot, lazily, and smirks. He idly wonders what mess they’ve gotten into for the change of heart. “Now’s not a great time for me, actually.”

 

She snarls and his eyebrow raises, apparently it’s serious. “Do you want us to lock the door and stop feeding you, because we will.”

 

He smirks, amused and curious, but unwilling to give the ground admitting that would take. “Eat me,” he decides on, conversational, before laughing, “If it’s your dad, you –“

 

“I don’t give a fuck about my dad. It’s Jemma.” Her hand cuts through the air in an angry slash, and he doesn’t realize he’s tense and leaning forward until she smiles, tightly, and continues, “She’s been captured by HYDRA. We don’t know where she is or what is being done to her. She’s been gone for a week. Can you help or not.”

 

He rolls to his feet and stretches his shoulders, already preparing to be on the move. “That’s a tall order.”

 

She snarls again and punches the field, making it flare brilliantly white, as she says, “Can you help or not.”

 

He grins, lazily, pleased. “I can help.”

 

It’s not until they’re walking through the empty base and she hasn’t bothered to even make a show of tying him up or blindfolding him that he starts to actively be concerned. So he does the natural thing and prods her. “How do you know I’m not just going to report to HYDRA and bring them down on your head?”

 

Her steps don’t falter. “You keep saying you’re on our side now.”

 

“You haven’t believed that before. Why now?” He tilts his head and starts to walk slower.

 

She glances back at him, realizes he’s slowed down, and scowls, grabbing his arm and dragging him back up to speed, he allows the forced momentum. Her voice makes it clear she thinks he’s being stupid. “Because it’s Jemma.”

 

He very carefully didn’t think about Jemma, because if he thought about her he’d start to worry. “And what makes that different?”

 

She rolls her eyes and turns sharply through a side door. “You love her.”

 

“My cover was fond of her.” There’s panic in his chest, but he keeps it contained, voice level.

 

“Oh please, your cover was fond of me. You were always soft to Jemma in a way that didn’t make sense, even then, and especially doesn’t as a cover. I have video of how your face fell for that instant you thought Coulson meant she was dead when he told you not to try to kill yourself again because she was gone. I was legit concerned you were actually going to kill yourself. Plus, I’ve been on the bus, you meant to make the storage room float, it’s not your fault you didn’t know it needed an extra five minutes to pressurize before being launched – seriously did no one else read the safety brochure? And I saw video of your face when Fitz came to you – you weren’t freaked out by the lack of Oxygen, you were imagining Jemma in his place. Didn’t occur to you what you’d almost done to her until right then did it?” She delivers it all at a fact pace, then glances over her shoulder, eyebrow arched in challenge and a smirk in place.

 

He has no words. Not for a moment, then he scoffs, because obviously she’s insane. “Please, winning her over meant the rest of you trusted me.”

 

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t respond until they exit the base. “Look, seriously Ward. I don’t care if you go back to HYDRA after this or lead them all back here – we have other bases you know – but you have to get Jemma out. She smuggled us some of the information on human experimentation back when she was undercover and it was…It was really bad. I’m afraid they’re doing that to her. Please. For her, or for me, or because you keep saying you want to be a part of the team – or to pay for your freedom. I don’t care. Just get her out.”

 

He shrugs, forcing nonchalance, and says lightly, “I’ll see what I can do.”

 

She rolls her eyes again. “Okay. Thank you. And you know if you rescue Jemma you’ve pretty much guaranteed the rest of us forgiving you. Even the new guys all love Jemma – Lance and Bobbi and Mack and all.”

 

He’s not fast enough to stop his slight snarl at what she’s implying, and she laughs before handing him a tablet and a flash drive. “Anyways, here’s what I have on where she could possibly be, please.”

 

The first thing he does is steal a car. The base is empty, which means the rest of the team is somewhere else, probably looking for Simmons. He knows they’re low on manpower, and he’s pretty confident they’re not going to waste anyone looking for him instead of looking for Simmons.

 

He stops for one of his drop boxes, gets a hotel room and has his first hot shower and good meal in far too long. He doesn’t even consider not going to rescue her. Skye is wrong about how he feels, but he knows the sorts of things HYDRA will do to a person, and he can’t leave Simmons like that. He very specifically doesn’t allow himself to think of why.

 

He takes a deep breath, grabs his burner phone, and starts trying to get in touch with his old contacts. Unfortunately, HYDRA is still reeling from their own reveal, and it seems everyone’s information is painfully limited.

 

It takes him three bases to find the one she’s being held at. He valiantly resists the urge to destroy the bases as he goes, not because he’s completely picked a side, but just because he craves action after being locked away for so long, and this sitting and talking bullshit in trying to find her is starting to wear on him.

 

She’s being held in Munich, Germany, and he feels like if anyone should be good at spotting Nazi’s in their midst it would be them, but what does he know.

 

Getting into the base is easy. He has HYDRA contacts to vouch for him, which makes it just a matter of playing nice with the head of the base, a Mr. Baztho HYDRA is still not the most well organized after the fall out and increase in incentive programs. Which is helpful as it means they don’t realize he was missing for quite so long, they think he was just on some assignment they didn’t hear about. It helps that that is, quite literally, what he tells them was happening. Being locked up by SHIELD would not play well, in this case, so he cheerfully lies.

 

Mr. Baztho is thin, stupid and evil, which means he’s easily manipulated. He says he heard about them having one of his old teammates, and he wonders if he could see her – to mock her, you know, for old times sake. He gets a laugh and a clap on the back for that and the man tells him she’s in no shape for anything strenuous, with a lecherous wink, but then leads him to the observation room, simple as that.

 

He wants to break the man’s fingers, but has to resist, when he tells Grant what a lovely specimen his teammate has turned out to be.

 

She’s strapped down, unconscious and pale. He can feel his breath catch in his throat, because she looks dead. The heart monitor lets out unsteady beeps that make his pulse pound in anger. It takes all of his considerable skills at deception to turn back to the man, eyebrow arched, and say, nonchalantly, “So what’s being done to her?”

 

The man laughs, and tells him how they are testing interrogation drugs on her. “Nothing as precise as a truth serum, of course, but things that make her hallucinate and be willing to tell the truth – things that make her doubt her reality and want to answer the questions of the nice men in the white coats.” He laughs, high pitched and shrill, and thinking that Grant is taking pleasure in this as he clearly has, starts to outline the various procedures precisely.

 

Grant feels an odd sense of calm descend, as he recognizes that he’s going to burn this entire base to the ground and take a fair bit of joy from it. Killing Baztho is going to be especially pleasurable.

 

The man doesn’t even know or care what a fair few of the drugs they’ve injected her with are supposed to do, he just says they make her scream delightfully. He takes a moment to drink from his coffee before continuing. “Don’t worry though, she should come to in a few hours, she’s just under sedative right now. Little bitch managed to kill one of the lab techs, they shouldn’t have let her get a scalpel. So if you want to have some fun, just stick around.”

 

He’s been locked up too long, because he can tell his voice sounds just a shade off when he says, “Oh, that’s good to know.” Before slicing a knife across Baztho’s throat. He wishes he had more time to make the man suffer, but none of the exit strategies he’d come up with since first seeing Simmons pale and limp on the table allowed for time to linger over any kills. At least, none of the strategies that ended up with her safely away from the base before she came out from under sedation.

 

He can imagine how much she’s going to fight him, once she’s awake, and he wants her somewhere he can contain her without causing her pain, or as little pain as possible, given the fact that she looks close to death already.

 

He’s a specialist so killing the guards before they even realize something has happened is easy, as is opening all of the sealed doors from the control room, as is placing the explosives as he leaves, even while carrying Simmons. She’d always been a tiny thing, but he could see she’d gone unhealthily concave, and he barely noticed her weight in his arms.

 

He sets her into the car and strips his own jacket off to wrap around her carefully before buckling her in. He considers, for a long moment, before grimacing and carefully wrapping an ace bandage over the sleeves around her wrists, the jacket should give it enough padding that she won’t hurt herself if she comes awake swinging. Since he doesn’t know when she’s going to wake up or how, he can’t leave her hands free, as much as he hates to do it to her.

 

He brushes her hair away from her forehead, taking in her pallor with a wince, and kisses her forehead.

 

He can hear the start of gunfire behind him and he doesn’t feel even a twinge of guilt for all the other captives who are unlikely to survive the explosion. Jemma is out and safe, and that’s all that matters to him.

 

He’s been driving for two hours before she starts making rough pained animal noises and twitching. He pulls over onto the dusty side of the road quickly, and reaches over to grab her wrists before she fully regains consciousness. She comes awake at the touch of his hand, wildly trying to jerk from his grasp and swinging, the whites of her eyes showing all around her iris.

 

He tries to use his most soothing voice, trying to keep her from harming herself. “Simmons, Jemma, calm down. I got you out, you’re safe.”

 

She stills but looks at him with large scared eyes, her face is even paler than it was earlier, and he’s very worried that she may have something very wrong with her.

 

She tilts her head slightly, curious like a bird, and says in a hoarse voice, “Oh, I didn’t know they knew about this one.” And she tries to scratch at his eyes in a move that’s shockingly sudden. Simmons never used to be that quick. And his reflexes are slightly dulled from being in captivity so long, so he ends up getting a gash across his forehead and partially down one cheek before he manages to regain his grip on her wrists.

 

She bares her teeth and looks more animal than woman as she thrashes and tries to get away from him. He swears and ends up holding her down with one arm firm across her chest and the other holding her wrists together. “Jemma, damnit Jemma, Skye let me out to come get you. I’m sure you’re on some really weird fucking drugs but I need you to focus, okay.”

 

She laughs bitterly and says in a sing-song voice, “Skye is dead. I saw her. Fitz and May and Tripp and Coulson too! They must not’ve known about you, or maybe you killed them?” She goes limp suddenly and tilts her head to the side like she’s listening to something he can’t hear.

 

He grimaces, he was really hoping she could be conscious for part of the journey, get some of the drugs out of her system. But he can’t drive with her like this. “Okay. We’ll work that out later, but we need to keep going or they’re going to find us.” He lets go of her and waits to see if she’s going to attack again.

 

Her face softens, and for a moment he allows himself to hope that she’s coming out of her haze, of course she ruins that when she says in a dreamy and clearly drugged voice, “Oh, don’t worry, there’s a tracker in the bottom of my foot. They’ll be here soon enough.”

 

He swears, viciously and gets out of the car, rounding to her side. She passively gives him her foot. They didn’t even try to do a good job, it causes the flesh around it to be dissented, but he thinks maybe that was to make walking on it painful. She doesn’t even so much as flinch when he takes a knife to it and cuts out the small tracker. It was put in deep enough that she’s going to be moving very slowly on her feet for the next extended period of time.

 

She tilts her head like she’s hearing something he can’t again, and then she starts hyperventilating, gripping her arms so hard the leather of the jacket squeezes and saying, “No, no!”

 

He swears again and grabs the sedative from the back seat. She doesn’t even seem to notice as he injects it into her neck, though she blinks slowly at him as her head lolls against the head rest.

 

He gets back into the drivers seat and watches her, waiting until she’s still and quiet again before he starts the car and pulls back into the road.

 

He grimaces and checks his phone for where exactly they are. He can’t keep sedating her, not if he doesn’t know what else is potentially in her system. And he needs to make sure she doesn’t have any more imbedded trackers.

 

He has to get her to a doctor.

 

The only doctors he knows are either SHIELD or HYDRA, and either way this is going to be terrible.

 

He knows he should bring her back to her base, make her feel safe. But that’ll result in him being locked up again, he doesn’t care what Skye said, and he’s not willing to just leave her outside like a present. He’ll get her better. Get her under her own power then he’ll let her go back to the base, but first –

 

He calls Skye on a burner phone, rolling his eyes when she answers with, “Melinda’s Miracle Salon, how may I direct your call?”

 

“Do you have a list of those? Is that what they have you working on these days – clever ways to answer the phone?” He lets some of his annoyance at being so helpless creep into his voice.

 

“Uh, I think you have the wrong number?” She sounds hesitant and unsure, but he’s too busy looking at Jemma who’s started twitching slightly to pay the proper attention to Skye’s tells.

 

“What the fuck Skye – oh. Someone’s there. Whatever, I have Jemma. She is _not_ okay. If I can get her sensible I’ll let her call you. Give Coulson my best.” He hangs up before she can say anything else, he’s remembered someone he can take her to and he wants her there as soon as possible.

 

He’s filled with rage for being so unable to help her and he takes it out by driving extremely aggressively.

 

The doctor is ex-SHIELD, but retired and thankfully far enough out of the loop that she doesn’t know that Grant was ever anything but loyal, so when he tells her that Jemma was experimented on by HYDRA she’s more than willing to assist.

 

She tries to shoo Grant out of the large bathroom where she’s had him place Jemma, but he refuses, and after some very judgmental eyebrows she leaves he alone. He watches them carefully, only averting his eyes when the woman strips Jemma down to examine her. She clucks disapprovingly and cleans up the open wound on the bottom of Jemma’s foot before performing various basic tests.

 

Her diagnosis is dehydration, malnutrition and various physical traumas. She tells Grant that there are other incisions, many other incisions. She tells him that none of the others contain trackers. Grant nods, smiles and agrees when she recommends that he get Jemma to a full SHIELD base to do a full tox screen as well as necessary psychological evaluation.

 

Grant thanks her and carries Jemma out, cutting the woman’s phone line as he goes.

 

The doctor had sedated her again so that she didn’t wake up while the foot was being stitched up. It is fours hours later when Jemma starts to stir.

 

They’re in one of his safe houses in Vienna. One of the ones he never told HYDRA or SHIELD about. And he knows they need to get further away sooner, rather than later, but for now, he thinks Jemma needs somewhere safe to wake up.

 

Again, she comes awake swinging. This time he stays where he is, quiet.

 

She sits there, gasping, running her hands over her arms and frantically looking around. Her eyes are blank though, and she looks over him twice before she finally lets out a breath, tilts her head down, closes her eyes and audibly counts to twenty-six.

 

Her hand goes from rubbing at her wrist to taking her own pulse, and by the time she’s done counting she seems calm.

 

Her gaze darts around again, this time with some actual intelligence behind it instead of animal fear.

 

Her gaze stutters to a stop on him. She blinks twice and wets her lips. “Grant.”

 

He arches an eyebrow. He’s never heard her call him by his first name, and this is a very odd time to start.

 

He takes a moment to examine her before he responds. She could almost pass for normal, except for the way her gaze shifts subtly to about three feet to the left of him every few breaths she takes, and how her hand has gone from taking her pulse to rubbing at her wrist. She’s rubbing at bonds that are no longer there, and the thought makes him feel both helpless and furious. He keeps his voice soft when he answers, “Jemma.”

She tilts her head and examines him for long enough that he has to actively clench down on the urge to fidget. Finally she speaks, and her voice is sad, sadder than it’s been thus far. “How long do I have?”

 

He wets his lips and watches her carefully, unsure about how calm she seems. “How long do you have for what?”

 

Her gaze is still flicking away and she’s rubbing her arms hard enough that she’s starting to make the skin pinkish. He wonders, not sure what to do, if she’ll stop before she’s bruised herself. She taps the side of her head and says, calmly, “In here, in my head, before the pain starts.”

 

He wants to kill someone – but he already killed the people who did this to her, and even though he now knows he was much too fast about it, he can’t exactly go back in time. And being violent now is not going to do her any favors. He takes a deep breath and tries to keep his voice calm and soothing. “…You’re not in your head, Jemma. I busted you out. You’re in Vienna.”

 

She shifts in the chair, oddly bird like and stares, unblinking for a moment before forcing a pained smile and saying, “Oh, that’s a nice change, I always wanted to see Vienna.”

 

Her gaze drifts over him again and then back towards the side where she stares, unblinking until her eyes start to water. She starts to hum to herself – it sounds familiar, he thinks it might be a lullaby but with how her breath is starting to audibly shudder out of her it’s not even vaguely soothing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you wanna yell at me on tumblr about my weird overuse of some words, or, you know, something about the characters, you can find me [here](http://capriciouswrites.tumblr.com/). 
> 
> I am...not 100% happy with this. But it's at the point where I just need to be done with this part or it's never going to happen. So have it.


End file.
